Opening A Bottle Rocket With Your Teeth (Part 2: Claiming Dmitri's Baggage)

Dmitri wears Diesel shoes. His shoes match his outfits flawlessly. Not in that pink shirt, pink sweatpants, pink shoes sort of way. His outfits are often from different stores, are different colors, and different styles, but they are, unquestionably, matching styles. They're unquestionably hot.

Having left a majority of my clothes in Pieceofshitdeserttown, my outfits are uhh...well, not outfits. And my shoes? During the last snowstorm my shoes got the toes kicked out of them. My feet didn't actually stick out of the toes, but I did look like a homeless person from the ankles down. I wasn't completely aware of this until I was actually on my way into Logan airport to pick Dmitri up. What I did know was that one of my many unreliable friends had flaked out and, as a result, my hair cut had never happened. I was a long-haired, homeless shoed freak in a non-matching outfit when I arrived at Logan. Late.

I buzzarded around Baggage Claim and the arrival gates about four times. His flight arrived at 10:45, and I had arrived at Logan at 10:47. I am tempted to blame this one Unreliable Friend #1, but I should have known that she wasn't going to show up or even bother to call me to let me know she wasn't going to show up, because she is one of my friends, and as I have learned this week, my friends are unreliable. If they say they're going to meet me somewhere at 6:30, they may or may not be there by 8:00, and odds are, they won't call to let me know they're running behind. I've been moderately aware of this for a few years now. In fact, I've caught some of their unreliableness. This is what happens when you belong to a community of people who advertise events starting at 7:30, but don't actually show up until 9:00.

I was cursing Unreliable Friend #1 for not giving me a ride to Logan (she was catching a flight there an hour after I was to pick up Dmitri, so I wasn't asking her to go out of her way) while I buzzarded. I was on pass number five, when I turned around. Dmitri was behind me. Apparently, he'd been following me for a turn or two. I'll probably want to kick myself for using Elvis's word, but the only thing I can think of to describe Dmitri is kyoooooot.

We took a bus, then the T, then a bus back to my place. Most of the trip home we followed/were followed by The Man in The Red Jacket. a mysterious stranger who had apparently been staring at Dmitri from the time he left Chicago. Creeeeeeepy. We ended up losing him when I got on the train going in the wrong direction. He did not follow us when we got off, and switched to a train going the right way.

Once Dmitri was unpacked, we went out for Indian food. On our trek to the restaurant, Dmitri began his one man show. I don't want to bore you with all the details, but I'm going to. When he was done berating me for not bringing a granola bar with me when I met him at the airport, he began making fun of my shoes. He then made several attempts to kick pigeons who had the misfortune to cross his path. When I crossed the street at places that were clearly not crosswalks, he let out a high pitched squeal, and ran across the street like a Muppet with its fur on fire. If he hadn't told me about his Mutually Exclusive Hookup Partner, I would have taken him right there in the street.

Our conversations deserve a post of their own, a la Drunken Conversations at Hampshire College. Dmitri is easily the Most Interesting Conversationalist I've ever met. He talks in and out of Gay so effortlessly, unlike most of our contemporaries. While Dmitri was on his cell, chatting with a Gay friend about dancing plans, I was on the phone with the guy who created the PE(s)T exhibit, a giant gerbil cage. The person sounded incredibly Gay. He expressed an interest in being at the exhibit when Dmitri and I arrived. I imagined him spending an infinite amount of time explaining"his vision" and the "metaphorical ramifications of a gigantic gerbil cage". This was not something I looked forward to.

Dmitri and I were discussing how Gay our phone partners had sounded when we arrived at the address of the exhibit. It didn't look like any art gallery I'd ever seen. In fact, it looked like exactly like the sort of vacant warehouse where serial killers rape, torture, and kill young art patrons and grind their bodies and incorporate them in their next "project". I sensed we would be the basis for an upcoming "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit". Dmitri vocally agreed with my inner-monologue, as we opened the heavy wooden door that led into the obvious trap art gallery. The stairway was filled with face shots of all the other unsuspecting people murdered on their way into the gallery.

Over the phone, The Artiste had said that his exhibit was on the third floor, the sign said it was on the fourth floor. I made the mistake of believing the artist over the sign (I spend lots of time with artists, I should have known to follow the sign), and Dmitri and I got out at the third floor. Someone in one of the little cubicles was either pureeing a human flesh smoothie, or vacuuming up the clues from the last murder. We quietly returned to the staircase and made our way to the fourth floor.

At the end of the long hallway was a set of bars that could only signify a gigantic gerbil cage, the place you lock up prisoners, or both.